Like many sociologists, I am perplexed by the fact that in meritocratic societies, individuals whose abilities or talent does not differ widely nevertheless enjoy considerably different levels of achievement and success. The present dissertation seeks to uncover some of the reasons behind such non-meritocratic inequality. There are two main approaches one can take to that problem. The first and more classical one consists in observing inequality that matters – inequality in earnings or career prospects for example – and to show that such inequality can be traced back to broad categorical attributes such as class, gender, or race and ethnicity. This is not the approach I follow here. Rather, I strategically select cases that make it possible to uncover the fine-grained processes and mechanisms generative of non-meritocratic inequality. Among these “pure” cases are art worlds – winner-take-all settings typically marked by high inequality, and where success is often vastly disconnected from merit or intrinsic quality. The first part of this dissertation focuses on one such art world as a laboratory for studying the social processes underlying the formation of economic value, and therefore the formation of inequality in economic success. CONSECRATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS OF VALUATION My approach to success and inequality rests on the intuition that we can partially explain them by studying social processes of valuation, i.e. processes that shape the value of things or individuals without affecting their underlying differences in ability, merit, performance, or talent. In the first two chapters this dissertation, I outline and test a theory of one such process, namely consecration. The first chapter develops a structural definition of consecration that makes possible to study its occurrence, conditions, and consequences in a variety of social settings. The chief features of that definition are identified using a series of empirical instances of consecration. The chapter then shows how that definition can be operationalized with simple network concepts, and suggests a network-based strategy for capturing consecration empirically – in art worlds for example. The chapter finally draws testable implications from that definition, and explores its relationship with the notion of retrospective consecration. The second chapter uses that notion of consecration to solve an empirical puzzle in the sociology of valuation. Markets for unique and novel goods are often seen as privileged settings for the powerful influence of market intermediaries: when quality is uncertain, or when it lacks definition altogether, intermediaries can play a crucial role in signaling or specifying it, thereby ultimately shaping the prices consumers are willing to pay for products. Products, meanwhile, do not get much more unique or novel than in the market for contemporary art. Yet economic sociologists have repeatedly failed to observe any influence of art market intermediaries on the value of the artists they distribute. This puzzling finding, I argue, arises from a misconception of how intermediaries shape the value of artists. We usually think of intermediation as acting through two chief processes of valuation: credentialing, or the signaling of unobservable quality, and qualification, or the establishment of specific quality criteria. Yet I suggest that it also can influence value through consecration, or the structural signaling of the existence of quality differences in a population. Using the market for modern art in early twentieth-century Paris as an empirical backdrop, this chapter shows that intermediation as consecration, not credentialing or qualification, was indeed how art market intermediaries shaped the value of their artists in the heyday of French modern painting. SOCIAL PROCESSES OF VALUATION AND ELITE CONSOLIDATION IN GILDED AGE AMERICA The remaining chapter is a logical development of the previous two. It builds on the fine-grained insights they offer – on social processes of valuation, and on the mechanisms of non-meritocratic inequality more generally – to address larger-scale issues of social inequality and social reproduction. The chapter uses a new database of subscribers to the New York Philharmonic to understand how cultural participation cemented the status – or social value – of elites in Gilded Age America. The database has information on who subscribed to the Philharmonic between 1880 and 1910 – a period of huge upheaval, of threats to the dominance of traditional elites, and ultimately of elite consolidation in the United States, and in the city of New York in particular. In analyzing these data I seek to understand how culture worked as an elite resource in that era. The classic account of culture and elite consolidation posits that the formation of an upper class and its continued dominance rest on a mechanism of exclusion. In this view, cultural participation reinforces elites by setting them apart – a process akin to consecration as I delineate it in earlier chapters. My work on the Philharmonic challenges that classic view. For the distinctiveness associated with elite cultural endeavors to reinforce elite dominance, I argue, these endeavors have to happen against a backdrop of general agreement over their value. In Gilded Age New York, this agreement happened not through exclusion, but through the inclusion of a group of cultural experts into the cultural institutions championed by the social elite. The inclusion of that cultured group served to testify to the quality of the cultural endeavors of the social elite, and provided them with a stamp of cultural legitimacy. In other words, it valued the elite through a process of credentialing. The second analytical contribution of that final chapter has to do with class consolidation and the reproduction of upper class dominance more generally. While consolidation is often seen as happening through exclusion and closure, I argue that in a context of rapid social differentiation, marked by the emergence of new areas of expertise, maintaining dominance does not necessarily involve barring access to outside groups. It can also mean being flexible enough to include the experts in emerging spheres. To remain atop the social hierarchy, elites may benefit from incorporating external elements that testify to their own continued relevance. Such inclusion is not necessarily full integration – instead, I show that at the Philharmonic it involved a built-in mechanism of protection, namely segregation. Hence cultural experts were included to help reify and support upper class status and social power, but in a segregated fashion to protect the upper class from threats of destabilization. Finally, a word on title: the notion of purity is the recurring motif in this work. It conveys ideas of social exclusion and social closure, as deployed in the third chapter. When thought about in relational terms, purity may also refer to one’s absence of ties to others whom one does not wish to be associated with in the public eye. This relational take on purity has strong affinities with the idea of consecration developed in chapters one and two. As a heuristic tool for the sociological imagination, purity is the thread that connects all the dots in this dissertation.

Hemispheres is a three-movement work for winds written by Joseph Turrin in May 2002. Commissioned by Kurt Masur for the New York Philharmonic, he wished to include a piece exclusively for winds and percussion in the programming of his farewell concert that commemorated his eleven years as Music Director. The work is in three movements: Genesis, Earth Canto, and Rajas which represent three different cultural views of creation. Formally, this work is based structurally and thematically on melody rather than harmony. This analysis focuses on three main tools which unify this work. The first is that thematic material from the first movement is reintroduced and developed in the second and third movements. The second is a consistently reoccurring rhythmic grouping in threes. This three note motive, found in all three movements, is used both melodically and as an accompaniment. The third is the unifying pitch center of C. Through an economy of musical means, Turrin composed Hemispheres with only a minimal number of themes and motives, each developed through the course of all three movements.

This paper addresses gendered trends in piano performance. It covers the New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania region between 1950 and 2019. There are numerous sources from throughout this region that are thoroughly archived (the New York Times, New York Philharmonic programs, The Etude, Clavier Companion/Piano Magazine, WNCN-FM broadcasts) that make this district an excellent candidate for case study.The second chapter explores gender representation in New York Philharmonic Subscription Season Concerts. It measures and compares the rates at which women and men pianists play different composers. The third chapter analyzes the New York Times reviews of women pianists who have performed in the New York Philharmonic Subscription Season Concerts. It focuses on how often reviewers utilize gendered language in relation to the composer being performed. Though the fourth chapter also covers repertoire and gender representation in The Etude and Clavier Companion/Piano Magazine CD/record releases, it centers primarily on the existence of gendered narratives within pedagogical resources. Similarly, the fifth chapter, explores trends in interview topics (clothing choices, sound production, children: to have or not to have?) that are specific to the woman pianist’s experience. Though limited in focus, this paper serves as a window into the impact that gendered thinking has had on the twentieth and twenty-first century woman pianist. / Music Performance

abstract: Joseph Turrin’s compositions for trumpet are frequently performed, and have become a large part of the trumpet repertoire. His trumpet works are played at events such as International Trumpet Guild conferences, have been featured with many well-known orchestras and bands, and are standard recital works. Many of Turrin’s trumpet works have been performed and recorded by well-established musicians, which include Philip Smith, Joseph Alessi, David Hickman, Robert Sullivan, Brian Shaw, Thomas Hooten, Terry Everson, Wynton Marsalis, and Alison Balsom. This study examines in detail each of Joseph Turrin’s twenty-four published works for trumpet. Turrin’s pieces include Elegy, Caprice, Concerto for Trumpet, Intrada, Two Portraits, Someone to Watch Over Me, Chronicles, Two Gershwin Portraits, Fandango, and Three Episodes, and include pieces written for Philip Smith, Joseph Alessi, Wynton Marsalis, Harold Lieberman, Lew Soloff, Brian Shaw, Robert Sullivan, and Thomas Hooten. A complete history of each composition and arrangement, and information relating to their premieres are presented. Technical elements from the music are discussed, such as range, articulation, melodic contour, endurance, and difficult fingerings. Biographical information such as youth, education, and career about Turrin are incorporated, along with a discussion of his compositional characteristics and influences. In addition, a list of each work with an assigned difficulty grade, as well as a current discography, is included. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2019

This dissertation centers on creating a new critical edition of the Rip Van Winkle overture. One of America's earliest opera composers, George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898), completed the opera Rip Van Winkle in 1855. When he revised it twenty-five years later in 1880, the composer omitted the original overture which was then thought to be lost. A concert version of this overture exists today only in manuscript form, located at the New York Public Library. Rip Van Winkle is significant to the history of American Music because it is one of the earliest operas composed by an American, and the first to be written on American subject matter (in this case, Washington Irving's story of the same name). Adding to the work's considerable historical significance is that the overture was one of the first American pieces performed by the New York Philharmonic Society, in which Bristow was a violinist. There is currently no scholarly edition of the overture, and thus this edition will fill a significant gap in the understanding of nineteenth-century American music. This critical edition of the overture to George Frederick Bristow's Rip Van Winkle was created in order to be published and available for performance and study, shedding light on the often under-represented American opera in the United States.

Since the Grade 1-9 Curriculum Reform took place in 2001, performing arts curriculum at compulsory education schools of Kaohsiung had faced several difficulties in practice. At the same time, marketing of the performing arts organizations also dropped down due to economic recession. In order to solve the dilemmas of both sides, the researcher thought that a partnership between compulsory schools and performing arts groups is a worthy strategy to try. Two concepts, art education partnership and co-teaching, were used to build up a theoretical framework. It is shown that a successful partnership between a school and a performing arts organization is influenced by many factors. These factors were taken to analyze the cooperative condition happened between the compulsory education schools and the arts organizations at Kaohsiung. Meanwhile, two schools, Kaohsiung Municipal Jiachang Primary School and Kaohsiung Municipal Youchang Junior High School, were chosen as the target cases of this study after a consulting conversation with the Compulsory Education Advisory Group of the Kaohsiung Municipal Department of Education(CEAGK). Members including the school administrative personnel, school teachers, parents and students of both schools were interviewed by selective ways. Taiwan Bangzi Company and the Bean Theatre also contribute their experiences to this study. In addition, observation and document analysis were also used as methods to collect data. Major conclusions are as the following: 1. Full time teachers and appropriate teaching materials are desperately demanded for compulsory education schools at Kaohsiung , unfortunately, even hired teachers has faced job crises at this time. 2. Performing arts groups are aware of the importance to cooperate with schools. 3. Knowing the difficult condition of the performing arts curriculum at school education, the CEAGK adapted strategies to assist teachers improve their skills and employ resources outside schools. 4. ¡§Personal contact¡¨ is a common way to find a partner. No contract was made, but agendas were the only documents for the cooperation. The interview results also reveal that schools need to improve their ways in deliberating the information upon performing arts education partnership. Although to work with schools in educational project is usually the goal for arts organizations, most activities were designed under the ideology of audience development or marketing the coming performance. 5. Both the schools and the performing arts groups respond that ¡§funding¡¨ and ¡§human resource¡¨ are key issues to conquer in dealing with ¡§performing arts education partnership (PAEP).¡¨ 6. PAEP at Kaohsiung is still on the ¡§Exposure Stage¡¨, co-teaching model by an artist and a teacher is still rarely seen. No one has ever attended workshops for the PAEP. 7. Evaluation on the effectiveness of PAEP is still lacked. 8. The PAEP at Kaohsiung was influenced by many factors including policy, funding, key persons, time and the project quality. PAEP should be followed by certain ¡§educational goal.¡¨ At the time of this study, the CEAGK and the performing arts organizations have asynchronous opinions towards the PAEP.